Copyright
Until Fools Find Gold
Copyright © 2019 by Mary B. Moore
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published by Boom Factory Publishing, LLC.
Mary B. Moore CONTRIBUTOR to the Original Works was granted permission by Aurora Rose Reynolds, Mary B. Moore, to use the copyrighted characters and/ or worlds created by Aurora Rose Reynolds in the Original Work; all copyright protection to the characters and/ or worlds of Aurora Rose Reynolds in the Original Works are and shall continue to be retained by Aurora Rose Reynolds.
You can find all of Aurora Rose Reynolds Original Works on most major retailers. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, photocopying, mechanical or otherwise, without express permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes. This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, story lines and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or any events or occurrences are purely coincidental.
Cover: Tracie Douglas, Dark Water Covers
Photo: Licensed Stock Image from istockphoto.com File ID: 469145126
Editing: B & Co.
Proofreading: Meaghan Royce, Love Infinity Book Blog
Contents
Providence Gold Series - Book One
Blurb
Definition of a Golden Townsend…
1. Luna
2. Noah
3. Luna
4. Noah
5. Noah
6. Luna
7. Noah
8. Noah
9. Luna
10. Noah
11. Noah
12. Luna
13. Luna
14. Luna
15. Luna
16. Luna
17. Luna
18. Noah
19. Luna
20. Luna
Epilogue 1
Acknowledgments
More Books By This Author
About the Author
Providence Gold Series - Book One
Blurb
Luna
Two years ago, my dad had packed us up in the middle of the night and we’d left town. We weren’t allowed to contact anyone or look back – until now. I’d run away, going back to the only security I’d ever known with my best friend Levi and his family.
Coming home was hard. Although I got to see my best friend again, it also meant seeing the man I’d been in love with since I was six years old – Noah Townsend. Working for him brings us into close contact and makes my no fraternization with the family members of my friends rule difficult.
One trip to Vegas to visit his friend Sven and a lot of alcohol later, I woke up Mrs. Townsend.
The problem was, I didn’t wake up in our hotel room or with him beside me.
Noah
“Don’t touch my best friend” my brother told me. It’s like being told not to push the button – you bide your time until no one’s around and then pounce.
Now that Luna was back, I was pushing the damn button, and I didn’t care what he had to say about it. She’s mine to protect, mine to love, just plain mine.
My trip to Vegas wasn’t for the reasons that I told her it was, and there was little room for things to go wrong. But I woke up the morning after our wedding and she was gone.
Luna is my wife, my world, my boom, and I will find her.
Dedication
Jamie Nibarger Ellis –
Beautiful hearts are hard to find, and I’m so grateful that I found you. You are one of the most amazing people that I’ve ever met and I’m just so thankful for everything that you do and for every laugh that we have together.
Thank you for supporting me, making me laugh, accepting my crazy mind and sense of humor and for literally everything that you do. You’re a one in a trillion!
I made a promise to you last year, didn’t I? ;-) Well this one is all yours.
M xoxo
Definition of a Golden Townsend…
Fool’s gold is actually the mineral pyrite. Pyrite is considered the most common out of all of the sulfide minerals (oh ya, I totally knew that. In fact, I often discuss the mineral compounds of pyrite in comparison to all of the other sulfide minerals in the world).
Pyrite is sometimes found in coal beds and as a replacement mineral in fossils. Despite being nicknamed fool's gold, pyrite is sometimes found in association with small quantities of gold so really, it’s not that foolish, but you can imagine some guy screaming, “I found gold!” and it just being pyrite. That would totally suck!
What has that got to do with oil? Because that’s their business and that’s why there’s an iridescent font on the cover – an oil slick to be precise!
Ok, quick math equation:
Townsends = fools. Complete twatty like fools.
Gold = has nothing to do with their oil, but oil has often been referred to as liquid gold. However, the likelihood of someone picking up pyrite and screaming gold would be pretty high if they were a Townsend.
In this instance, the fool finds gold, but it’s a human version – a woman. The woman. The big boom.
So, T (ownsend) + G (old/big boom gold) = Fool’s Gold.
Boom found, claimed and kept!
1 Luna
“Hello?”
I’d done so well to not cry up to this point, but the sound of my best friend’s voice on the other side of the phone almost broke me.
“Levi,” I tried to whisper as loudly as I could, but the pain and the fear made my voice almost inaudible.
I didn’t have to worry for too long though. Like it had been from the first day we met, he just knew.
“Luna? Luna, where are you?” I could hear the sound of fabric rustling the other side of the line like he was getting ready. I’d known I was lucky the second I met him and he’d claimed me as his best friend, but that luck came back now to hit me all over again. “Don’t talk, just send me your location now. Okay, Luna-Lu? Text it to me.”
Pulling my phone away from my head, I looked at the screen and did what he’d asked me to. During all of this, not once did I get distracted from my surroundings and the people who were passing me by. I couldn’t afford to, not now.
“Levi,” I croaked, trying to get some strength back so I could talk normally, but I was exhausted and the pain in my face was really starting to hit. I’d been running on adrenaline for six hours and now that I’d stopped moving, the adrenaline wasn’t fighting against it and I could feel it all in its no doubt technicolor glory.
“Don’t talk,” he muttered, the sound of the car door closing and the engine starting following it. “Make sure you’re in a safe place and wait for me. If you need to move, do it as much as you need to but keep me updated so that I don’t pass you. Do you understand, sweetheart?”
God, I loved my best friend.
“Okay, Levi.”
I looked around me and checked to see if there was a place I could hide until he got here. Spotting a dumpster down an alleyway, I slowly walked toward it and then merged into the shadows behind its massive form. From here I could see the street in front of me, but most importantly I could see the cars and the people on that street.
Swallowing hard around the knot in my throat, I took a shuddering breath in and then let it out.
“Okay, I’m
going to go so you can save battery power. My map says I’ll be with you in roughly two hours, so just hang tight. I’ll message you with updates, so put your phone on silent. Before you check it, make sure you have it under your sweater to try to hide the light on it too. I’ll be with you soon, Luna-Lu.”
I would have smiled or chuckled each time he’d used his old nickname for me if I wasn’t in the shit storm that I was in. I felt a tug and twitch at the corners of my mouth though. It was the first time I’d even been tempted to smile or laugh in years and it felt strange.
“Okay, Vi-Vi,” I mumbled just as a black SUV drove past my hiding spot.
Dropping back down behind the dumpster, I gasped with the pain and carefully peeked around the corner to take a good look at the inhabitants of the vehicle. A great whoosh of breath left me when I saw that it was a family instead of someone affiliated with my father.
“Hang tight, sweetheart,” he hadn’t misread the noise coming from my end. “Hang up now, I’ll be there soon.”
Hanging up, I switched my phone onto silent before getting into a more comfortable position. It was hard to do because I wasn’t sure what I was squatting down in. It was also a well-known fact that people peed behind dumpsters on a regular basis, so I made sure not to touch anything and prayed that my legs wouldn’t give out. I would have to change positions while I waited, but the discomfort in my legs couldn’t beat what I had been through already and what was going on in my face.
My beeping… no, on this occasion I was going to swear. My fucking father.
I hated that man.
I hated that part of his DNA made up my own. I’d checked that fact too because I hated him so much, praying they’d come back with a, ‘no, this asshole isn’t any relation to you, so you can arrange a play date for him in the busy traffic’. The day it had come back with a definitive yes, I’d cried my heart out.
I only had one relative that I loved, my big brother Madix. He was the one who had taken the hair samples to hand into the DNA lab for me and had called me with the results. My asshole of a father wasn’t his, the lucky guy. He was the only person that Dad had let me stay in touch with, and that was on the condition I didn’t let him know exactly what was going on. I hated lying to him, but Dad had said he knew people who would kill Madix if I did. He was a cop, so when my father told me that, all I could think of was all the movies where there were crooked cops who offed the good ones.
I’d been seventeen when he’d told me this and after I realized that it was unlikely that he had this power, my father was too aggressive for me to change things. He never left me alone with Madix either.
I knew he had a gun because he held it against my head regularly, so what if he’d shot my brother under the table? Fear does strange things, but so does love. I loved my brother more than life, and the possibility of anything happening to the big giant with a soft heart… it was too much to even think about.
I couldn’t go to him now though because it would be the first place that Dad would have looked. Levi would be the second place he went, but I knew that the Townsends would be able to hide me. Plus, he was scared of them, always had been since Levi’s dad, Jer, went to him after they saw the bruises on my arms and threatened him.
I’d hidden the abuse for years from them, but Dad had come into money somehow and was feeling invincible because of it, so he hadn’t paid attention to where he was hitting.
Not long after it, I’d been woken up in the middle of the night with my arms tied behind my back and my legs tied together and was then dumped in the back of the car. I’d thought it was because of the Townsends and had felt smug at the thought, but it quickly became apparent that he’d fucked up with the money he’d been throwing around the place. The true owners of it had come calling wanting every last penny back.
It had never been clear why he’d dragged me along with him, keeping me tied up or cuffed to a solid piece of furniture for almost four years. Why not just leave me behind and run? I was another mouth to feed (when he felt like it) and another body to consider (again, when he felt like it).
I wish I’d never wondered why. When I found out tonight exactly why, I also wish he had left me behind or that I’d suffocated on one of the many occasions that he’d gagged me and shoved me in a tiny closet.
I was his insurance. On one hand, he was trying to pacify the many people he owed money to and that he’d fucked over by saying he had a daughter that he looked after on his own. On the other hand, he was looking for a permanent buyer for me.
He’d found a buyer and when I’d begged him to let me go, he’d hit me hard enough to knock me out. Assuming that I would stay unconscious, he’d then left the motel room for a celebratory drink leaving me behind and for once unbound.
I’d stolen the money that I knew he kept in a duffle bag. He never was the most inventive or clever man so he’d just kept it on him, arrogant in his belief that nothing would ever touch him or happen to it.
The almighty Rick Cleaver.
He’d picked up a woman when we’d arrived, his typical type of junky skank. She’d left her car keys on the bed, so I’d taken those, gone to Dad’s car and cut as many cables and pipes as I could, and had left without looking back.
Where I’d stopped to call Levi would give me a good smoke screen for a while. It was three hours away from my brother, and six hours away from where I’d told my father that Levi had gone to college. I’d known that if something like this came up that I’d need to buy myself some extra time, so that lie had been a well thought out one. I also doubted that the skank owned this car legally, so the chances of them calling it into the police were slim. Rick also had a severe allergy to them and the law, so he definitely would not want to be involved in anything to do with law enforcement officers. This fact bought me even more time.
He would catch up with me though. He would. And it would be a painful catch.
I just prayed that Levi got here before he did.
Levi
“Yeah,” my brother Noah’s tired voice mumbled through the speakers in my car at me.
“I need you to get everyone together. I’m bringing Luna home.”
I knew that the name would have him jumping out of bed. I felt like shit seeing as how I’d warned him not to go near her a million times over the years, and now I was almost dangling the carrot in front of him. If I could have hidden her from him, I would have, but I knew that everyone had to be involved in this. I also knew that if anyone would keep her as safe as I was going to, it would be Noah.
“Is she…” he broke off, unable to bring himself to hear if she was in a bad way. I’d wanted to know the same thing when she rang, especially after I heard how weak her voice was, but I’d known that getting to her was the priority and then I could check for myself.
“Unknown,” I muttered, eyes flicking down to the screen of my phone to check that I hadn’t missed a call or text for her. Seeing nothing, I pressed down slightly harder on the accelerator. “It didn’t sound good though, man.”
A door slamming was followed by a hissed, “Fuck!”
“Yeah.” My voice was flat when I replied.
I’d worried about her constantly over the last four years. Worried what that bastard was putting her through. Worried that I would never get to see her again. Worried that she’d be dead and I’d never know.
We’d been best friends since we’d met in sixth grade. Her mother had just overdosed and died, and her dad had thought the town we lived in was the best place for him to continue being his asshole self. It was also a great place to pawn his daughter off on other people.
Her brother was eight years older than her and was living his own life. His father wasn’t a complete asshole either, so Madix had grown up in a real home surrounded by people who loved him after his dad had won custody of him – no contest.
When Luna Blue had walked into the classroom looking like a scared owl, I’d decided that I was going to help her. What I hadn’t banked on was that w
e’d become as close as we had.
Over the years, everyone had assumed that our friendship would grow into something else. In fact, my mom had all but begged me to make an ‘honest woman’ out of her, thinking we were more than we were or that I was holding back for some reason.
The truth was, we were nothing but best friends and I loved her like a sister.
“Bring her back,” Noah’s voice cut into my thoughts. “Go straight to Archer’s house,” he directed.
Archer was our oldest brother and the best one at straightening shit out and forming a plan of action.
Confirming I would, I hung up and went back to thinking.
Noah may be four years older than us, but he’d taken her under his wing too and had protected her from the bullies when I wasn’t around. Not that many people had the guts to go up against her knowing how close we were, but there was always some deluded twat waiting for someone out there. I’d warned him from day one not to touch her, and as she’d gotten older, I’d repeated those words more regularly.
She may be my best friend, but I wasn’t blind to how beautiful she was.
She was tiny, just over five feet tall which put her at over a foot shorter than both me and Noah, even during our teen days. She had long dark hair that hung to the middle of her back and her eyes were a unique shade of brown - the color of coffee with a lot of cream in it. That’s what had made her look like an owl to me on that first day– those big eyes watching everyone closely.
Until Fools Find Gold: A Providence Gold Series and Until Series Crossover Page 1